Fate Ancients
by Lord Mist
Summary: The Holy Grail wants heroes? Over a hundred wait for it from another universe. The Grail Wars will never be the same again. FatexDota cross. A series of oneshots.
1. Caster - New Age of Knowledge

I own nothing, none of the characters or series used in this. Heck, I don't even own the laptop I'm writing this on.

So I've got addicted to Dota 2 so much. :( And the heroes – their lores – all of it is so awesome. So awesome. I only wish Valve made a video about each hero, showing off how badass they are. Until then, here's my attempt, dropping them in the Fate universe.

* * *

Caster. The weakest of them all. The one who wielded magic – but what use was magic when the Saber, the Lancer could shrug them off with ease? When the Archer stayed outside their range and the Assassin struck from behind? When the Rider was too fast to strike? When the Berserker ignored magic and tore the mage limb from limb?

In a sense, the class of Caster itself wasn't the weakest. In general, mages likely to be summoned were simply not of the class that could match heavyweights like Iskandar and Arturia, like Gilgamesh and Heracles.

In general.

* * *

"Obey? Me?" sneered Caster, his hands twitching and flexing as his would-be Master collapsed on the ground, his body singed and smoking. "What a fool to believe he could command my actions."

Colours shimmered and swirled around the man as he contemplated his course of actions. He did not wish for anything, he told himself. Yet the question remained, why was he here then?

No matter. This world had yet to realise his glory.

And until it did, he would just have to show them.

* * *

_What on earth is that?_ wondered Saber, Arturia Pendragon, as she fended off an assault from the Golden King, Gilgamesh of Uruk, Archer of the Fourth Holy Grail War. Even through the shining light of Babylon Gate, even beyond the flurry of swords and arrows that the King of Heroes threw at her, she could make out a man-sized….monster flow onto the field.

It appeared to be made of lava, and was nothing more than a beastly face perched upon a body of lava that ended in a trail, with no discernible legs. The monster turned and _spat_ a stream of lava at Gilgamesh – who, distracted, allowed it to strike him and then noticed that his armor was corroding away slowly.

Angered, the Golden King cleaved the beast in two, but another one crept out of the bushes and_ spat_ at him. This too, was dealt with quickly- but the limited patience of Archer was wearing out.

"Reinforcements of yours, Saber?" he spat.

Affronted, she shot back. "I would need no reinforcements to deal with you, Archer."

"And yet you struggle and tire, my Queen." he replied, his red eyes glinting. "You will eventually be mine."

She refused to respond to this, partly because she knew he was right to the extent of her tiring. Mustering her strength, she lifted Excalibur again, and held it defensively, waiting for the next assault.

"All things belong to me." continued Gilgamesh. "I am the King of Heroes, the ruler of the world, and there is no man who can match my presence."

Silence.

And then laughter rang out, laughter that dripped with sheer arrogance, with supreme confidence, with overwhelming narcissism.

"Match?" boomed a deep voice, and Saber idly noted that it carried the same tone that Gilgamesh's own did, "Whoever you are, you are scarcely worth my notice."

Whirling around, his eyes blazing with fury, Gilgamesh snapped. "Show yourself, worm. Who are you to ignore me, mongrel? Know your place."

A gust of cold wind blew over the clearing, and suddenly Saber found her legs moving so slowly, like she was walking through quicksand.

"Who am I?" said the voice.

And then where there was no one, a man appeared. Blonde hair, aristocratic features and pointed ears – a white cloak and vestments, with violet and gold edgings. Most noticeably, there were three coloured orbs floating around his person, shifting between a soothing blue, a pulsing pink and a fiery orange.

"To you pathetic minds, I can be known as Caster."

"Caster." hissed Gilgamesh. "I should have known. A snivelling coward who shows himself in the battle of his betters, his pathetic parlour tricks paling in comparison to the raw power of a king. Why are you here, dog?"

"Allow me to educate you." replied the Caster, and the orbs around him whipped into a flurry. Saber's breath hitched at the sheer magical power emanating from the man, and she wisely decided to step away from him and Gilgamesh – or perhaps it was an involuntary reaction.

"From the first point was begat a line."

The orbs shifted, the man snapped his fingers, a raging tornado swallowed Gilgamesh, buffeting him dizzyingly in the skies, unable to coherently form a response. The tornado tore the ground into pieces, and then – died out instantly, dropping Gilgamesh from a height.

"From the first line was made the world."

As Gilgamesh landed, a pink blaze of energy built up in front of him, its pitch steadily increasing as it built up to a crescendo and exploded, the searing burn sapping Gilgamesh's strength and prana and funnelling it to the man in front of him.

"And that first point…"

Then the world exploded for Saber. A noise unlike anything she had ever heard resounded out throughout the battlefield, completely disorienting her and Gilgamesh, knocking them backwards and making them drop their weapons.

"Was one that _**I made**_."

With a final flick of the man's hands, the sky parted. And from above came the fury of the heavens themselves, a meteor that threatened cataclysm, that brought forth the fury of the cosmos itself. With a earth-shattering crash, it landed on Gilgamesh's prone form.

"I am the ingenious, impecunious archmage." continued the man, his entire form glowing. "I am the Invoker. I am…Carl."

* * *

Alright ! So there it is! To the Dota 2 players, you won't understand unless you've read Fate novels exactly what these classes are and who these players are, and to the FSN readers you won't know who this 'Invoker' dude is.

….So I've essentially made something no one will read, how fun.

Review plz kthx


	2. Berserker - Trees Everywhere

I own nothing, none of the characters or series used in this. Heck, I don't even own the laptop I'm writing this on.

So I've got addicted to Dota 2 so much. :( And the heroes – their lores – all of it is so awesome. So awesome. I only wish Valve made a video about each hero, showing off how badass they are. Until then, here's my attempt, dropping them in the Fate universe.

* * *

Berserker, the Mad Servant. More beast than man, mind clouded in the fog of his own insanity, the Berserker class was meant to be bloodthirsty, single-minded and quite simply, insane.

This Berserker fit two out of the three.

But the insanity part, it was safe to say he fulfilled this requirement. He blew it out of the metaphorical water so hard it would have a pathological fear of explosives and water for the rest of its metaphorical life. And he was one who had _firsthand_ experience of pathological fears.

* * *

Ilyasviel von Einzbern shuddered involuntarily, her white hair whipping in the biting winds of winter in the north of Europe. Her usual clothing had turned ragged after the first few hours in the forest adjacent to her family's ancestral castle.

Gulping and shivering simultaneously, she wandered around the forest, unknowingly being watched by hungry eyes. She had been told not to return until she had summoned her Servant, and she would rather face the forest than her Grandfather.

Her opinion changed, though, when a pack of hungry wolves surrounded her in the clearing, having tracked the weak prey through their jungles. Stumbling in fear, her fingers and toes numb with cold, Ilyasviel von Einzbern did something she had never done before. Closing her eyes, she whispered a faint prayer to the Root of the World, and desperately chanted the few lines she could remember of the ritual she had been told.

"Thy eyes clouded in madness-" she whispered.

She could hear the wolves growling as they moved closer, and frantically recited the rest of the ritual.

"I am the good of all worlds, I will eradicate all that is evil-" she shrieked, and instinctively opened her eyes as a wolf pounced – "COME FORTH!"

Ilyasviel kept her eyes open long enough to see a tall, squat form appear which looked vaguely humanoid, and then fainted, her ears ringing with an incessant whirring.

* * *

"Ilyasviel." said Jubstacheit, as the young homunculus who was close to being his real granddaughter returned, "I trust you have summoned your Servant?" Something in his voice told her that she had better answer in the affirmative.

"Yup, I have!" giggled Ilya, having changed into new, warm clothing and being served tea by the maid-homunculi.

"And?" Jubstacheit quirked an eyebrow.

"He doesn't want to come out at the moment." said Ilya, her face falling for a second, and Jubstacheit was suddenly reminded that she was a _young girl_, "He says that there are enemies of his around!"

"Enemies?" said Jubstacheit, startled. _Surely no one could have-_

"Don't worry, Grandpa!" replied Ilya. "He's just a bit-" and she tapped the side of her head.

"Berserker?" he asked, leaning back in his chair and sipping his tea. Either the Servant was paranoid or he was a bad liar – or maybe he was a good actor _pretending _to be a bad liar, or a great actor _pretending_ to be paranoid or- ugh. Jubstacheit brushed his forehead. Associating with Kiritsugu Emiya had rubbed off on him, it seemed.

"Yup!"

"Also, Ilya," said Jubstacheit, "do you mind explaining why the entire Einzbern family forest is now a ruin? I do believe not one part of the forest is still standing." It was nothing a little thaumaturgy couldn't fix, of course, but he wanted an explanation.

Ilya merely smiled mysteriously.

* * *

"Berserker." said the sing-song voice of Ilya. "Come out and play with onii-chan."

Saber tensed, shoving her Master, Shirou Emiya behind her. _This is bad. _She wasn't at completely full strength – her Master's botched summoning – and now she had to fight Berserker, which would no doubt be a monumental task in itself. Why, if this Berserker was anything like Lancelot, then-

"Do I have to?" came a whining voice from the air.

"Yes." said Ilya, her foot tapping impatiently on the ground.

"Courage." muttered the voice to itself, and then…Berserker appeared.

Saber wasn't sure _what_ she was expecting – perhaps a mad knight, perhaps a muscled barbarian – but this? Berserker was a – short, amazingly so, perhaps two foot pink-skinned creature – and he was sitting in some sort of humanoid mechanical contraption. A sawblade for a hand left no doubt as to what exactly the contraption was meant for, but Saber had never seen anything like it either in her own life or in the knowledge the Grail had given her.

"You! You're with the trees, aren't you?" shot out Berserker, his eyes widening fiercely.

"What-"

Saber had no time to finish her sentence. A long chain-hook shot out of the other hand of the contraption, and latched on to a tree behind Saber. Immediately, Berserker shot forward, shouting wildly as his contraption flailed about, its entire body rushing towards Saber as the chain pulled it to the tree.

Confused and startled by the sheer overwhelming insanity of it all – a pink goblin in a wooden suit flinging itself at her while screaming – she dodged at the last second: but Berserker's suit split open at the middle and whirling blades screeched.

Saber cursed, tumbling to the ground, as her armour tore apart on her arm. _What-_ Her armour wasn't supposed to break apart so easily! _And now_, grimaced Saber, standing up and examining the rest of her armour, _it appears he has weakened all my armour with those blades._ Clutching her sword, she idly noted it felt slightly heavier than it normally did.

Still, with _Prana Burst_, she kicked off the ground forcefully, slashing at Berserker – who had destroyed the tree he had latched onto by colliding with it, and seemed rather pleased with that – and struck, tearing a deep gash into the side of the mechanical suit he was wearing.

Berserker didn't seem to care, and flailed his sawblade at her, putting shallow scratches onto her already weakened armour, but she grit her teeth and swung at _him_ directly instead of the suit – and then a metallic dome covered the exposed top of the suit, stopping her blow and preventing her from even seeing him.

The two traded blows for a few seconds, enough time for Heroic Spirits like them to strike each other a dozen times, before Saber backed off. Each successive strike she had hit him with had cut shallower and shallower into his suit, and trading blows did not seem the most favourable outcome, given her armour was now more or less in pieces.

_Still_, she mused, _at least his suit is- what?_ And she stared in exasperation and a little apprehension as before her eyes Berserker started healing, his suit reforming around the cuts she had put in it.

"I SPLIT YOU AND I CUT YOU!" screamed Berserker, his prana building up. "AND I KILL YOU!" With a swing of his saw – a huge spinning blade, easily six foot in diameter, appeared out of thin air and flew towards Saber, who used her _Prana Burst_ to quickly get to the side and Berserker followed up with another chain latching to a tree.

Crashing unsteadily into a tree, Berserker watched as his blade devastated the forest and summoned it back to him. "I CUT THINGS! IT'S WHAT I DO, WHAT ELSE WOULD I DO?" he shouted into the sky, sending his massive rotary blade towards Saber once more, who had realised this would be a long and hard battle.

"CUTCUTCUTCUTCUTCUT-"

* * *

Alright ! So there it is! Chapter 2! I assumed Saber is an AGI hero for Whirling Death to reduce her Armor + Atkspeed. How was it?

Review Please!


	3. Saber - Magic is an Abomination

I own nothing, none of the characters or series used in this. Heck, I don't even own the laptop I'm writing this on.

So I've got addicted to Dota 2 so much. :( And the heroes – their lores – all of it is so awesome. So awesome. I only wish Valve made a video about each hero, showing off how badass they are. Until then, here's my attempt, dropping them in the Fate universe.

* * *

It is an unquestionable fact that magi all over the world had grown complacent, had grown arrogant and had grown uncaring. Magi rarely considered the impact even the most mundane spells of theirs had on society at large; and in the current era, with the Clock Tower having no concept of 'unethical research practices', it wasn't a rare thing for a magus to slaughter a room full of non-magical newborns and not even face punishment – and instead be **praised – **if his 'experiment' had brought about a deeper understanding of the fickle force known as magic. Most magi had taken this to the extreme, growing drunk on their power and taking it for granted.

Someone had to tear their misconceptions apart before something too serious to be ignored by the general public happened, and forcibly remind them that magic did not make them invincible.

Shirou Emiya summoned just the person.

* * *

The first time Shirou Emiya saw Saber, he was trying hard not to collapse in fear. He had just been stabbed in the heart by a blue-clad spearman, _**somehow**_ not died, and then the maniac had found him once more and was on the verge of killing him, and then he had accidentally activated a circle that was on the floor, and then he found himself staring into a pair of angry eyes, and he couldn't turn away _because there was a terribly sharp purple crescent shaped blade at his throat_.

"Foul sorcerer," spoke the man, "Thou shalt not bind me to thy un-" he paused. "Thou dost not reek of the unholy taint of the magical arts."

Shirou nodded as much as the blade would allow him, and mumbled about being a third-rate magus.

"So thou art a failure at the art of magic, a craven weakling."

Shirou would have protested, but the blade was pressing further onto his throat. Suddenly, the man turned, facing the blue-clad maniac who had found Shirou once more.

"Thou, on the contrary, stink of magic."

The blue man grinned, baring his teeth. "What are you going to do about it?"

The man Shirou would come to know as Saber did not bother replying, and instead assumed his fighting stance, knees slightly bent, one of his wickedly sharp blades facing the blue man and another behind him.

It was the first time Shirou got a good look at Saber. Dark-skinned, tattooed and with a mohawk, he looked like one of the stereotypical henchmen Shirou saw on television. Yet his purple robes and blades that were _glowing blue_ marked him as different.

The two adversaries stared at each other for a brief second.

Then Saber vanished.

All Shirou could see was some dark blue lights dancing in the air where Saber once stood, and without warning Saber appeared beside the blue man and struck.

Lancer was the Hound of Ulster, but it was only his reflexes as a Lancer-class servant that kept Cu Chulainn from falling prey to the wicked slash of the crescent blades. He blocked it with Gae Bolg, and the two adversaries traded hits.

"Nice magic trick." grinned Lancer ferally, parrying a slash with the tip of his spear.

This only seemed to make Saber angrier, and his attacks came faster. "'Tis not magic, but purity of will!" he spat, continuing his vicious assault.

The two fought to a stalemate; Saber somehow matching his nimbler adversary in sheer speed, both their blows visible as nothing more than a haze of purple and blue – yet Lancer was holding his own against a Servant supposedly his better in weapon-to-weapon combat. Saber seemed to have realised that there was nothing to be gained in continuing this, and he stopped his aggression.

Another display of dancing blue, and Saber was once again back where he started.

"Tch," smirked Lancer, "tired already? You weren't half bad, but my Master has ordered me to end this, so-"

Lancer pulled back his arm, intent on unleashing his Noble Phantasm, a cursed spear that reversed causality itself to strike at the heart of his targets. "Gae Bo-" he stopped, as shock gradually dawned on his visage.

"No prana? Are you joking? I'm sure I had enough to-" he stopped, staring at his smirking opponent, and the slightly humming crescent blades he wielded. "A cheap trick. So your blades can drain my prana? Well," roared Lancer, "it matters not! Come, fight me, Saber, and lose to me in combat!"

Saber smiled, and the very action caused Shirou to _shiver_. The Servant brought both his blades in front of him, gesturing at Lancer. "Thy life's weight…" he opened his arms, summoning forth the teachings of his life, "in prana pay!"

The next instant, unimaginable pain coursed through Lancer as the void within his body which was devoid of prana exploded outward, ripping through his body, coursing outward in a magnificent fulmination of azure energy that destroyed both Lancer's form and the area that surrounded him.

"'Twas an act of charity."

* * *

"Vile sorceress," spat Saber, his eyes flashing in rage. "to thy just reward, my blade compels thee."

Shirou did not normally subscribe to the rather dogmatic zealotry that his Servant displayed, but even he had to admit that this particular target deserved his ire. Servant Caster, Medea of Colchis (not that Shirou knew that) had taken to draining innocents of their prana to fuel herself, but had also attempted to sever Shirou and Saber's contract, and potentially gain him as her Servant – it was only through an alliance with Rin Tohsaka and her enigmatic Archer that Shirou had succeeded in freeing Saber, who, despite the tortures she must have inflicted on him, had not succumbed. Indeed, Shirou noted idly, he seemed to be in better shape than he expected, the magical curses she threw at him only acting weakly.

"Oh?" said Caster, seemingly unfazed. "I know how you fight, Saber. Barbaric. You would burn my prana and then strike me down with the same Noble Phantasm that killed Lancer, when my prana stores are empty. But," she said, wagging her finger admonishingly, "I saw how long it took you to drain Lancer's prana. With my massive store, it would take you double the time, long enough for me to cast my destructive spell that kills both you and your pathetic Master."

For some reason, this set Saber laughing. "Double the time, thou sayest? Very well." With a shimmering glow, a white axe appeared in Saber's hand.

"My name is Magina, the Anti-Mage, foul wench," swore Saber, the white axe glowing as it shattered into pieces, "and I shall tell thee a jest famous when I lived."

"What time is it?" continued the Anti-Mage, his smile growing more and more pronounced as the white dust of the axe coalesced into human forms, and now three identical Anti-Mages stood in front of a terrified Caster, sporting indistinguishable sneers and humming weapons.

"It's 3 AM." they all said together, and dancing blue was all Caster recognised.

* * *

Alright ! So there it is! Chapter 3! FFFFUUUUUUCKKKK MAGIC!


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